What is Left to Learn
by Phantom77
Summary: One-shot. Summary inside, rating just to be safe.


I'm drawing a comic on Deviant Art with the Sonic cast as the main characters. I want to set it on earth (since some of the games I've played are set there), but unfortunately there is some gaps between the games and the setting in which they take place (as you guys probably know). Plus I _**might**_ make a historical reference in the comic… maybe. Still working out most of the plot.

So I decided to write this one-shot to fill in the big gaps (figure that I've watched enough of the history channel to pull this off), and since I had a FanFiction account before I discovered DA I figure that I should post it here. Hope you enjoy.

I do not own Sonic or Tails. So no legal actions please.

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In the Green Hill Zone a stone's throw away from the island's one, small, but urbanized city is a little yellow house. It is roofed with red tiles and two circular windows peek out at the world on either side of the painted front door. Everything was trim from the rectangular front lawn to the cobblestone pathway cutting through it, and the clearly printed letters "Prower" on the mailbox. A stark opposite to the brown airplane hangar directly behind it, where tires of various sizes were stacked haphazardly out front, robot and engine parts lay scattered about. A tarp carefully covered the stacks of gasoline and jet fuel to one side, and the massive steel doors where cracked ever so slightly, just enough to allow anyone passing by to glimpse the blue paint of the famous Tornado.

It was a quiet morning on that particular day, or at least it was until a blue blur flashed up the sidewalk, down the path, and stopped on a dime, two inches short of the painted door.

"Yo Tails! Open up." Called Sonic rapping on the door.

"…"

"Hey Tails, you home?" He knocked harder.

"…"

"Hm," Sonic mumbled, "he must be out back." So in another flash he ran around the side of the house, avoided tripping over the robot parts, and stopped in front of the hangar doors.

"Tails!" He shouted into the empty space, but the only sound that responded was his own echoing voice.

"Huh…" He mumbled. So he zipped back to the front door, and uncovered the spare key hidden under a loose stone in the cobblestone path.

"Tails." Sonic called again as he used the key and the tumblers rotated in the lock.

"Buddy?" Sonic cautiously opened the door, and the morning sunlight threw his shadow onto the coffee table. It sat in front of a worn but comfy second hand couch, where a pair of yellow ears peeked over the pages of a very large book.

Sonic sighed, walked in, and the slammed the door shut behind him.

"Gaaa!" Tails shouted. He tried jumped up in his surprise, but he was too settled into the couch to make any swift movement s.

"Jeez Sonic," Tails sighed when he realized it was just his old friend, "you really scared me."

"Serves you right Tails, when you have your nose stuck in a book a whole squadron of Eggman robots could invade the Green Hill Zone and you wouldn't notice." Sonic grinned. He went over to the couch and sat down.

"So… Whatya reading?" Sonic asked trying to read over the fox's shoulder.

"The History of Human and Anthro-Animal Societies" Tails answered.

"A textbook??? Seriously Tails…?"

"That's not really a question Sonic, but it's actually really interesting."

"How?"

"Well…. Let me start at the beginning." Tails dog-eared the page he was on and flipped back to the first chapter. He pointed to a half page illustration. It was a photograph of the faded and chipped painting on an ancient pot. It depicted a Greek warrior facing a large animal that the painter had obviously tried to show as a monster.

"Almost very ancient society in recorded human history:" Tails began, "Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, and many more have some form of artwork in which their heroes are fighting and possibly slaying disfigured looking animals. Scholars studied these images with the preconceived notion that these were the retelling of myths and legends, but with new events, advances in genetics, fossil discoveries, and radiometric dating it is now known that these guys"- he taped the creature- "are our distant ancestors."

"What? Our really-really-really-_**really**_ great grand fathers looked like **that**?!?"

"Similar perhaps, but their bones didn't petrify very effectively. It is why their fossils are extremely difficult to find, and why it is difficult to reconstruct what they must have looked like."

"Alright, but how on earth can this guy be related to us? I mean, I don't see a family resemblance." Sonic grinned.

"Well that was thousands of years ago Sonic. Evolution has played its part too." Tails replied, "After all the Human societies of the day thought these creatures were monsters, and tried to hunt them down as such."

"That's mean."

"Well Sonic you have to remember that the earliest fossils from around that time show that they had brain cavities about the size of a baseball. So our ancestors may have been slightly smarter than the average beast but a carnivore is still a carnivore. They could have indeed hunted humans for food, and naturally the humans retaliated."

"Ok… That makes sense, I guess, but how come we became these guys but other animals didn't?"

"We're still trying to figure that out. The search for the 'missing link', as you will, is the same for both anthro-animal and human species, but we're getting away from the timeline." Tails shook his head. "Now when our ancestors were being hunted down it was usually those who possessed the greatest speed, strength, and intelligence in its most extreme forms that escaped. Biologists call this a Bottleneck Effect, since this mass hunting drastically cut down the members of the species who could pass their genes onto the next generation, and hence drastically changed the way our species looked."

Tails flipped through the book until he found the page he was looking for.

"Look familiar?" Tails asked pointing to a picture. It was in black and white, and very old. It showed a small group of people sitting together in a family photo sort of style. Since the clothes were also old fashioned and no one was smiling it must have been taken when the first cameras were invented. _"Lousy photos if you ask me." Sonic thought, "They had to sit still so long that they couldn't hold a smile, and who would want a picture with no one is smiling in it?"_ The caption said that it was a merchant family and the mountain base behind them was Mount Gongga Shan*, a peak in the Himalayas. However what drew Sonic's attention, and probably the attention of the books publishers, was an oddly shaped figure in the background. He or she was hiding behind a bolder in the cliff side. This figure was fairly small, maybe about Tails's height, and to anyone who had never seen an Anthro-animal it was humanoid enough to be thought of as one from afar. However, to Sonic the shape was unmistakable. The tell-tale quills, the large hands and feet, this was a hedgehog.

"Is that really…?" Sonic began to ask.

"Yup. One of the first Anthro-Hedgehogs, or any Anthro –animal caught on film. You see when our ancestors were being hunted in ancient times it wasn't just the smartest, strongest, and the fastest that got away it was also the ones that looked somewhat humanoid. Then over time and successive generations we eventually evolved into what you see today." Tails answered.

"Alright Tails, I'll give it to you. This isn't half bad." Sonic said. He leaned back on the couch, stretched out, and put his feet on the coffee table. "But… There are some things that I still don't get. I mean," – he tapped the figure-"I don't think there were any 'demon hunters' when this was taken."

"Of course there weren't, but I've only told half of the story." Tails grinned. "You see, like anything that has been hunted, whatever species it may be, it eventually learns to stay away from its hunters. That's exactly what our surviving ancestors learned, and as human civilizations expanded our people fled to the most extreme and isolated regions. Now of course, humans have not always been kill happy hunters, and when the European Dark Ages started to come to a close the pursuit was practically nonexistent. Few people believed in 'demons', 'dragons', or 'monsters' anymore, but the fear of humans had already been implanted into early Anthro civilizations."

"Yeah… You know Amy told me these stories that her grandma heard from her grandmother and whatnot. They were really gruesome actually."

Tails nodded. "They listed some of those stories in here and… Yeah, they're chilling, but that kind of superstition makes sense. So with the humans forgetting that our kind even existed as the Renaissance was dawning and fear keeping us away from them, all of the cultures involved grew completely isolated from each other."

"Now of course,"-Tails began flipping pages- "when countries such as Spain, England, Portugal and other European nations setting off on the first voyages to the new world our people couldn't just run and hide anymore. Because their numbers had increased to a point where there would be no place left _**to**_ hide. So they turned to something new to maintain the isolation."

"And that would be…" Sonic asked.

"The Chaos Emeralds." Tails replied.

"No way! The chaos emeralds are **that** old!"

"Possibly older, but it's hard to confirm. Since the energy the emeralds give off interferes with radiometric dating, and there haven't been any surviving records or artwork from our ancestor's societies that date before this period."

The little fox was having a hard time trying to find the page he wanted. He continued to flip through chapters, but his brow was wrinkling in frustration.

"So with the power of the emeralds they cloaked their entire countries."

"_Cloaked_ Tails? I think you've been watching too much _Star Trek_."

"Call it what you want, but entire tracks of land appeared to have been wiped off the face of the earth…. Where is it?... Anyway, not only did it make these areas disappear but kept it that way for at least three hundred years. That is until August 29, 1963."

"Oh yeah. The day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech… I had a history teacher once who went on this whole deal about it." Sonic sighed remembering.

Tails stopped. Looked up from the book and stared at Sonic dumbfounded.

"I didn't ditch the **whole** thing Tails…" Sonic moaned, not amused.

"Huh…" Tails mumbled. He looked down at his book again and let out a yelp of surprise.

"Found it!" He passed the book to Sonic. On it was two world maps. One was labeled 1963, and the other 1964. The 1963 map had the 7 continents. Though several major islands were smaller, but the 1964 map was the world Sonic knew.

"No one knows exactly why the chaos emeralds suddenly stopped working, but the results were revolutionary. What became known as the eight great kingdoms appeared out of nowhere and for the first time in history Anthro and Human societies began to mingle."

"Wait. There're seven chaos emeralds Tails, not eight." Sonic interrupted.

"You're forgetting about the master emerald. In fact the master emerald cloaked the only landmass large enough to be considered another continent"-Tails pointed to the1964 map. Where in the middle of the Pacific ocean slightly south of the Hawaiian islands was a chunk of land about the size of Australia, and had Angel island floating above it. – "Four of the chaos emeralds also hid partial tracts of land attached to New Zealand, the northern Canadian islands, Madagascar, and Iceland. Though the area revealed around Iceland renamed itself Soleanna when it was discovered. However the chaos emeralds didn't just make islands disappear. In Brazil's tropical rainforest, Russia's far northern territory, and in the African Sahara when the chaos emeralds stopped working entire Anthro societies reappeared in areas though to be deserted."

"Sooo. This is where everyone starts getting along and it is happily ever after, right?" Sonic grinned.

"Well more or less, but Sonic I can't emphasize enough how amazing this was…. I mean, not only were the Anthro societies separate from the humans but from each other. So when they were revealed, different cultures, new technology, medicines, crafts and architecture flooded into the world. There is just so much that to be learned, even now 47 years later."

"You could probably open a whole museum with this kind of stuff." Sonic mused.

"More than one, Thousands!" Tails grinned, "… But what makes you say that?"

"Because the mayor of Metropolis would like us to be at the opening of some fancy museum in like… Fifteen minutes." Sonic answered looking at the wall clock.

"WHAT!" Tails shouted, "It's that late! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He leapt of the couch and out the front door. "We're going to be late!"

"Why did you think I came over in the first place?" Sonic laughed following him out.

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Congrats to those who made it this far! ;D Yes I am a geek, and a little bit of a history buff. Hope this made sense and that I didn't bore you.

PS I hope I didn't offend anyone by picking the day after Dr. King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech for the day the emeralds quit. I just figured it would be a nice date for it. ^^;


End file.
